Security System Reform and Identity in Divided Societies - Lessons from N. ireland

This chapter deals with how SSR projects tend to grapple with identity based grievances in post conflict and transitional settings. It uses the framework of the Northern Ireland policing reform project stemming from the Independent Commission on Policing in 1999 to highlight and examine the extent to which problematic framings of conflict related identities might be unwittingly copper-fastened by 'change' and how other cross cutting identities might be marginalised in the process. It concludes that the N. Ireland policing reform process has been most successful where it has been able to find creative ways to work within and around a range of identities, including those often unacknowledged in mainstream police reform debates.